The Setting
The history of the the world is a sprawling tapestry, embroidered in blood, magic and gold, stretching from the furthest past to the current hour. The First Dawn Lyr : The truth is that the universe is a massive field of primal energy known as Lyr. Lyr means “core” and "root" in the Old Tongue. Lyr suffuses everything, manipulates everything and composes everything. It takes on countless forms, such as the physical composition of the world, the body of a creature, or the breath that gives it life and sentience. Lyr is the essence that maintains the order of the Cocoon, and Lyr is the swirling insanity—the Dream—that lies beyond it. : Time before Shape : In the beginning, there was only raw Lyr, an endless sea of pure chaos, infinite change, and formless potential. Here, there were no rules, boundaries and restrictions, only an eternal sea of impermanence we call the “Dream”. Within the Dream existed the Mother. We do not know if She predated existence, or if she were born from the Lyr, or She was somehow coterminous with it, but She was the first of all shaped things. Perhaps time itself was irreverent before the First Dawn, but for a time untold, the Mother drifted within the Dream, surrounded by nothing but swirling chaos. Let There be Shape! : : Weary of the madness that sorrounded Her, the Mother desired shelter from the endless tempest of formlessness. From this desire sprang shape and order. She willed the Grand Design, spinning the threads of fate and time with Her distaff to encase herself in a massive globe that chaos could not penetrate. Inside the globe, the mother wove dream into existence, where Lyr was made solid, given form and order. : After some time, the Mother pooled all her strength to break the globe into two, parting the skies and the seas, and the fragments fell up to the heavens and became the stars. She spun Lyr into fertile lands, where trees, mountains and various life forms arose. She wove blankets of verdant forests and plains, and satin expanses of oceans and cerulean skies. She wove the moon and the starlit darkness, appointing them to mark the passing of time as the night. : And on the heavens, She fashioned a globe of luminous light into a city of gold, Bran Vaal, that lighted up creation as the sun. Here, the Mother settled down to rest. This is the period that we came to know as the First Dawn. : The existence, however, could not run itself, and her world did not permit long lapses of attention. Hence, the Mother created the Rau'n to govern and maintain the Cocoon, leaving it in their charge. The Rau'n : The Mother loved her creation deeply. From pure lyr she formed several rau’n into existence, then gave each of them a name and a purpose—a sphere of influence and a position in a hierarchy that would govern the world. Every rau'n has a function and purpose in the Grand Design. The purpose defined the rau'n, and became its nature, so the rau'n would spend time maintaining the portion of the world over which it held dominance. Every piece and part of the Cocoon has an embodiment in a rau'n, however small or large. Not only objects have rau'n, but universal concepts as well. : The Mother took Eos, the Rau’n of Creation, as her consort and lover, and they gave birth to many god-children between them. Their eldest daughter, Aoide, was appointed to be the Overseer of Sorcery, the great art which the mother worked to construct the world. The eldest son, Cerod, became the Master of Time, while their second daughter, Nimue, became the Keeper of Fate. : The world was ready for the genesis of the mortal races. The Dawn of Mortals : Thus far, no one truly knows why the Mother and the Ao created the mortal races to populate the world. Priests say that the answer lies within the Grand Design, while theologians speculate that it is because divine beings are empowered by mortal prayers. : The Sundered Morning The Golden Zenith